Disabled ? Iso Legal/Healthcare/Navigator-Assistant for Vital Care

I am a former full time Professional Journalist and Professional Writer from San Francisco, having spent the last 18 months unable to work or access essential healthcare from being injured - with a resulting crushed foot and fractured ankle - at the same time the victim of my ex-husband's defilement of our divorce decree in which he was, in lieu of any alimony (of which I was owed over 100K,) to provide six -instead of of four- years of the specialized PPO insurance which had been created particularly for me with the assistance of multiple specialists, experts and healthcare insurance professionals. Despite winning a lawsuit subsequent to the default of the decree, complications from the injuries and further compounding of the situation created by inaccessible care, forced me and my family to settle for a sum far less than what I was owed in actual insurance and in small payments of actual cash, losing the insurance all together. My ex-husband was not a citizen and immediately upon my injury, he left the country and remarried. For the most most part, myself and my family had to deal with the legal department and human resource personnel of the rather globally successful corporation he worked for at the time, as the primary issue was that he had remarried and their policy could not allow for insurance coverage of his new wife and myself and due to the state of my own affairs subsequent to the injury, my representative was less than tenacious in comparison to that of the company my ex was at work for.

Thus, the reality of the situation now, is that I have gone 18 months without care, being denied by 8 hospitals throughout the state and having had one hospital (a UC associated medical center in Southern CA,) agree to the surgery and due to the fact that I had to admit to being unable to remain in the area after the initial procedure for the post-op rehab care of the injury, the surgeon in charge who had initially agreed and gone through with all the pre-op procedures, cancelled the surgery one day prior to the day it had been scheduled. Finally, now in Humboldt County, I was granted comprehensive Medi-Cal, special enrollment, CalWorks, Cash Assistance, and Section 811 Housing as I also suffer from a long term debilitating illness (for which I previously received nearly 10 years of Social Security Disability and Medicare for,) which requires ongoing medication and specialist care to avoid severe, if not fatal, damages.

The first 3 months after my injury the person I was living with refused to help me get to an ER or Urgent Care facility, and I was evicted for yelling for help. After this, the man I was living with helped me transport myself to a small San Francisco SRO hotel, however, then abandoned me there without assistance, a wheelchair, or any way to acquire help. I am a former ice skater and ballet dancer and my right foot has been broken 4 times with my left foot (the one now crushed) having been fractured twice. I also sustained - in the 21 years of ballet and ice skating - multiple other injuries of my feet, toes, ankles, knees and both legs, none of which ever required major surgery. Additionally, I had no knowledge that if I was to get to an ER/Urgent Care facility once the injuries had already begun to heal, the situation would be considered "non-emergent" and the simple coverage I had (until moving here to Humboldt,) would not cover any procedures to heal and assist in regaining mobility. (Resulting in the 8 denials of care and the non-liability of the UC Medical Center in canceling the procedure.)

Initially, I came to the Eureka/Arcata area as planned (except without the actual surgical procedure done at the UC Medical Center down south accomplished,) staying with a good friend who was both concerned by the logistics and what seemed to be someone in real medical need falling through the cracks, and who was also someone I was growing close to in a partnership that was growing beyond the platonic. After about a month and a half to two months, and around the time which most everything had been transferred and re-set up to be given in both medical and social services here in Humboldt County, my friend confessed that he had been hiding, for some time, the fact that he felt uncomfortable having me here with any sort of intimacy, and admitted that he had withheld the facts of the matter from me feeling guilty that without, at least, his being open to allowing me to stay here in his home for a temporary period, I would be not only in the desperate situation I was already in professionally, medically and legally, but then homeless as my family, whom I was living with down in southern California, consists of merely a mother and stepfather - both of whom are over 70, retired, and unable to afford or provide for care (monetarily or otherwise,) for me. Additionally, given that my home of the last 20+ years has been in San Francisco, all my former healthcare providers, professional contacts, personal friends and colleagues...etc are within the Northern California area. Many, like myself, have relocated to other areas nearby San Francisco due to the rising market rates and cost of living in the city in these last years. Nonetheless, any future home, employment, legal or medical issue would be made significantly easier if I was nearby the Bay Area or back in the city itself. I would prefer to remain in Humboldt County as healthcare in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties, respectively, is autonomous and comprehensive and not tied directly to the county in question - much like Medicaid in the rest of the country. These are the only two counties in CA wherein the marketplace exists in this manner. In addition, as a Journalist and Writer, I have former experience and potential (if healing or improvement occurs in my medical condition soon,) to regain my position at a local magazine in Arcata.

I am still residing with my friend however, it has become increasingly uncomfortable a situation, especially since, around the time of my friend's revelation of his lack of feelings and misleading behavior, I was faced with a social service demand that I prove - via a document of some sort - that I receive the small amount of cash assistance (consisting of about $300 a month,) from my father who is currently in the end stages of cancer and who also lives out-of-state in the Mid-South area of Tennessee, but also some sort of proof that the injuries and lack of care created a need for services (for which I had no coverage for,) and assistance that required large quantities of my monetary savings (approximately 30K in total - nearly the total sum of my resources, without -in over a year - being able to continue working or gain any type of assistance: public, private, federal, state, legal, medical, healthcare insurance, housing, transit, social service or otherwise,) thus depleting more than the whole of the savings I had built up over the last ten years and placing me back in debt beyond that I was in after graduate school.

I am aware of how to acquire a letter from my father stating the simple facts of his monetary gifts, however, being as sick as he is, giving me this document was not a priority. And, because I'd explained both this fact - as well as my lack of knowledge as to what and how to acquire the other materials to my original representative here at the Dept. of Health and Human Services in Humboldt County, with their seemingly understanding and helpful response, I was shocked when, during the time when my friend admitted his truthful feelings to me, I also got word that the benefits (of all sorts, including Medical and ability to gain special supplemental enrollment,) were now denied as a result of the documents/proof that was requested.

I am searching now for anyone who can provide information, referrals, advice, suggestions, or volunteer their own or help from any relative organization's resources - for which I would be extremely appreciative. Whether legal, medical, personal, housing or transit assistance or merely socially supportive, anything at all would be helpful. At this stage in the game, I am exhausted of resources, tenacity and nearly depleted of energy to again fight what has become a cyclical battle for services and rights I, for the majority of my life, felt were fairly inalienable if not, at least, easily defended. As my hope decreases, it becomes more and more difficult to find other support and other people willing and able to be both sympathetic and capable of pro-active help.